THE STICK AND THE CRUST

Lyttelton Times, Volume CI, Issue 11900, 25 May 1899, Page 3

THE STICK AND THE CRUST

A stick and a crust of bread. Like the hands of a clock, these two articles told the time o’ day for nearly a year in a certain man’s life. Yet, unlike the hands of a clock, they' were not visible at once. When he needed the stick he had no use for the crust; and when the crust was welcome he had no further occasion for the stick. ‘ Albe’it he was a young fellow of twentysix, you would be wrong in supposing this stick to have been in the nature of a weapon for attack or defence. In that case the crust and the stick would have harmonised. As it, was, they did not. For the stick was a support, not a club. Now, when a man feels "the pressure of eighty or ninety years, he is apt to want a travelling companion of that sort; but one in the very heyday of youth, not suffering from any 1 injury, and not constitutionally feeble, or 1 malformed, shonld commonly be able to walk without a stick. And so this young man had always done up to the time when he fell oui with the crust and with all that the crust stood for or represented. His own account of the circumstances runs thus: —“Up to October, 1893, I bad been a strong, healthy, and active man. Then I commenced to feel weak and out of sorts. I was heavy, tired, and had no ambition or energy- What had come over me I could ( not imagine. I had a foul, nasty taste in the mouth, and was constantly spitting up a thick, dirty phlegm. My appetite left me, and what little I ate lay on my stomach like lead, causing me great pain about the chest. A short, distressing cough settled upon me and troubled me day and night. “ At night my sleep was disturbed and broken with night sweats and frightful dreams. I had great pain at the left side around the heart, and my breathing was hurried and short. Next I began to spit blood, and was greatly alarmed at it. I wasted away rapidly, losing over a stone weight in a month, and became so .weak that I was unable to rise on my feet without assistance. “Although only a young man of twentysix I was obliged to hobble about with a stick, and could walk but a short distance even at that. Worried and anxious, I attended the York County Hospital, where the doctors sounded me, and said I was in a consumption.” . A Here we have another of the serious and often fatal mistakes that are made m cases like this. Misled by symptoms which m some respects resemble those of tion, medical men hastily decide That the lungs are affected, treat the patient perfunctorily for the hopeless, disease he is not afflicted, with, and leave the result to chance. Hence, he often dies of dyspepsia and its complications—his. true Aisease—which, unlike consumption, is easily curable by the remedy our friend finally employed. “ They gave me cod-liver ou, he conturned, “ and medicines, But I got no better. Indeed, I was so low-spirited and miserable I didn’t care what became of me. As time passed I grew weaker and weaker “After I bad endured ten months of this, Mr R. W. Dickenson, the chemist in Wahngate, advised me to try Mother SeigeTsSynlp. After taking it a few days I felt much better, my appetite reviving and my food giving me no pain. I continued to take this medicine only, and_ soon the cough and breathing trouble left me, and I began to gain strength and flesh. When I had taken three bottles 1 was as strong as ever, and I could eat and even enjoy a dry crust. I have since bad. good health. You are at liberty to publish this letter and refer all inquirers lo me. (SignecJ Isaiah Lewis, ILt, Walmgate, York, April 8, 1894.” If the reader wonders bow a man could suffer so much, become so emaciated and weak, and be pushed so near the vrave’s edge, through what is sometimes flippantly called “mere indigestion, he has vet to learn that the digestion is the arbiter of life and death. The “crust” (food), enjoyed and digested, means me and strength. Rejected, it means the ” stick,” to supplement swift-coming weakness; and then the prone position,’when help is vain. Mother SeigeTs Syrup enabled Mr Lewis to substitute the crust for the stick. It cured Iris dyspepsia.